Soyo's SY6BA+III

Soyo's SY6BA+III - Page 1

Well
now... It seems as if there is quite a stir about the new round of
motherboards that have been released lately. The marketing focus and
design efforts of today's Motherboard Manufacturers have shifted to
embrace the needs of the serious "overclocker". Never
before have we had the features available to us like the ones on new
boards from the likes of Acer, Abit, MSI and Soyo. Software
selectable CPU settings in the BIOS are now commonplace features.
Also, many are adding the ability to tweak CPU voltages and PCI Bus
timings as well. Life keeps getting better and better doesn't it?
The following is a glimpse of one of these new breed of boards. The
Soyo SY-6BA+III has a wealth of new features and the obvious
benefits they bring with them. Let's break out the toys!!

Whoa...
I got a little moist when I saw all those Front Side Bus speed
settings... Didn't you? That's not all this little honey is packing.
It
also has two three pin fan headers right next to the CPU Slot (great
for the "dual fan big chill") and 1 at the front corner of
the board next to where you would mount a front intake fan on your
case. These
connectors are strategically placed to perfection. However, (perhaps
Soyo and others will finally take note!) get that darn ATX power
connector out from behind the CPU slot! This location for the power
connector is now almost a default for most . WHY??? PLEASE, just
scooch (technical term) it over a few more inches and flip it
horizontal so it is on the edge of the board next to the CPU slot
but not too close to the power supply. That's where we want it guys
and gals... OK? Capiche??? :-) (soap box mode off)

Another feature of this board that I love are the various
available PCI Bus speed settings that you can adjust in the BIOS to
go along with your FSB speeds.
You can relax the PCI bus speed when overclocking the CPU so that
your other periphs don't freak out. Finally, the BIOS
adjustable CPU core voltage settings are just what the Doctor of
Speed ordered
for that extra bit of stability. No, you can't take it any higher
than 10% (2.2V) over CPU spec. but rarely are there any benefits to
going higher than that. We once had a P2-300 that liked 2.4V but it
was a little scary running at that voltage all day and we took it
down for sanity.

This board is built with the usual Soyo quality... Superb! So, you
folks want us to fire the rocket boosters huh? Oh yeah!! We couldn't
wait either!

Well, for
starters due to the additional FSB settings we were able to get the
trusty ol' P!!!-450 to new heights of overclocking. We achieved 567
MHz., (126MHz. X 4.5) something that we have never reached with this
CPU on any other board. The best we have done in the past was 558
MHz. (124MHz. X 4.5). This 126 MHz. setting was only available with
a PCI Bus speed setting of 31, which "underclocks" the PCI
bus by 2 MHz. A standard spec. PCI bus runs at 33 MHz. in a PC. I
was a little disappointed that Soyo didn't include a 41 MHz. bus
setting like they did on the 124 MHz. FSB setting. So we decided to
fire up a simple "Wintune" benchmark to see what gain if
any we had.

The
numbers don't lie. There is a small gain in memory and CPU
performance at the expense of disk performance at the 567 MHz.
setting. Regardless, these are excellent numbers all around. The
MIPS and MFLOP numbers are fantastic! The SY-6BA+III blew through
these tests like Mario Andretti liquored up on nitrous! Let's move
on to something a little more challenging.

Winbench
99 Scores at 558MHz. and 567MHz.

Click
it!

Once again, this
board is made of the good stuff. I am truly impressed by the general
performance of the SY-6BA+III. Here again, we see that the slight
boost in CPU speed but a decrease in PCI speed, is not the optimum
set up for this board. We were much happier at 558/41 and the
numbers prove why.

Now, here's
where I decided to throw a little more hot sauce on this puppy to
really get things cooking. Our current favorite in house board is
the Shuttle
HOT-649A.
This board is a dual Slot 1 and has on board LVD SCSI from Adaptec.
We wanted to see if the SY-6BA+III could compete with the 649A and
possibly unseat it from the Hot Hardware "Sin-Bin"
Computer System. So, we put them head to head in a Winstone match
up! We configured both systems exactly the same with one P3 CPU in
the 649A. Yahoo! I think smell burning rubber here! :-)

Winstone
99 Benchmarks at 558MHz. and 567 MHz.

Click
'em!

Well
I'll be.. !! The SY-6BA+III seems to have kicked some Shuttle booty
here! I wouldn't say it ran off with it but the 649A was beaten none
the less! Does this prompt us to make the change to the Soyo board?
No, it was too close to call in our book. The difference in speed
was imperceptible. We also can't live without the SCSI interface.
Most BX chipset based boards come in pretty close clock for clock.
The 649A is significantly more expensive however. If you want a sub
$200 board and don't need Dual CPUs or SCSI, the SY-6BA+III is a
great solution! Comparing these two boards on anything other than
CPU performance wouldn't be comparing "apples to apples".

Finally, here again, the 126/31 setting performance is consistent
with what was seen in the other tests. If Soyo just gives us that
126/41 setting, we would be rockin'! (hint hint!) :-)

The
post game show... (conclusion)

Once in a while
a product comes along that truly delights the customer and delivers
on most every expectation. We've felt this way about only a few
products here at Hot Hardware. The Voodoo 3-3000, Leadtek Winfast
S320II and Shuttle HOT-649A would be naming a few. The Soyo
SY-6BA+III, although not perfect, (nothing ever truly is) now joins
this illustrious rank with us!